Cyhyraeth
by The Hart and Hound
Summary: Exile separates them no more than a pane of glass. NuadaNuala, movieverse, told in two parts.
1. Oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown

Title: Cyhyraeth (1/2)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Hellboy belongs to Dark Horse Comics.

Summary: Exile separates them no more than a pane of glass. NuadaNuala, movieverse, told in two parts.

* * *

She had smiled the day that he had left, kindly, as it were, and placed her hands very softly on her brothers greaved forearms. It didn't hurt to smile then. The gold and goblin iron of the gauntlets were greasy and cold and she had felt it crawl beneath her nails, sit oily and slippery on her smooth fingers. She had thought of snakes then.

Nuala smiled still. She might have cried.

"It is needless, you know." She said then, watching her marbled reflection in the metal beneath the elbow. She could see his face in it too. Looking at each other through it. The fabric beneath their warped faces was plush and black, the skin further down still white and chill. He has always had cold skin. "You needn't go so far from us."

"From you," he said. She hadn't bothered to correct him.

"From me," she said, and drew his arm between her hands, let it sit in the crook of her breasts. The metal stung the flesh of her chest, but his hand sat softly at the base of her throat and she had struggled not to swallow. He had too. Nuala really hadn't thought anything of it then. She had thought to warm him some before he left, had wanted to be close. (_ You wonder how long he had thought it though, oh yes, because he __**does**__ think of it, probably even back then._)

She doesn't remember as well as she ought, because there was a time that the trees were her memory, books, libraries on which she could write her thoughts. Her mind was like fingers cracking into their bark and they had sighed and shifted to let her fit inside them, expanded. "It a rare thing to trust so utterly that you can submit without hesitation," her father had told her, and she had laughed a little, pulling a wrinkle out of his then beautiful robes. Nuada was with her then too. He had been wroth to be parted from her in their early youth, despite the encouragement of their parents. (_Yes, you had a mother once. Neither of you remember. Not for the same reasons._)

With the trees went part of herself, and she can even now feel that hacking, biting, burning at her legs like she had roots, and a part of her was lost each time the humans felled her with axes. Which isn't entirely correct, she has to remind herself because she isn't a tree, but a part of one nonetheless. But it also hurt to know the tree's trust was so easily destroyed. (_But what faith did it have in humans? They sat beneath its branches, pulled the fruit from it just as her people had. They could not hear it, did not heed its dance and song in the breeze, and that deafness to others is what she truly thought ate away at them so. "You're such a child, sometimes, leannan boidheach," said Nuada, some other time maybe before or after, but comes to mind now._)

She cannot remember if he smiled or not in the way that he used to, before the war and the mortal lord of the southern isles crushed her mother's throat (_bruised, like edelweiss, and just as bitter smelling despite the stone_), when she held him to her heart. Nuada smiled so rarely, even in the days before, that she is not sure if she has made up what she thinks it looks like.

"I will go," he said then, "because that is what I feel I must do."

"But why?" she asked, and tried to keep the tremors from her voice. She was (_is_) not a good actor.

"What is moral to our father, to end our war with the humans, is injustice to my heart. He would hide you, **us**, and give all else to **them**. And I, I will be ready when he has need of me, either of you," he said, and clenched his fist. In hindsight, she wondered if he had forgotten it had been around her throat. She could feel all the way to the nails and bone of his fingers.

He practically jumped when he felt the pain himself, hand hot and quickly gone from her. Even what had previously felt chill beneath his armor was icy with need, with vacancy. Her own hand wandered to sit just below her collar. She wondered why she could feel so cold so quickly.

His frown had been anxious. "I did not mean to hurt you."

"You hurt me now, even now as you leave."

He really had nothing to say to that. She should have felt less exultant than she had, some minor victory. His wit has always been superior to hers, and then she had sought to wound, to return that sudden cold pain in her throat and chest. She, that day, had felt human too. (_You wonder if he saw that in you, if it had disgusted him in some way. It shouldn't please you to know there was no way you could have hurt him more._)

She swallowed around a tightness, like a stone. "You would not part from me willingly at supper some years ago lest you had to sit with someone else, someone who was not me, not identical and readable in every way, but now you leave and plan to possibly never come back. How fickle you have become in your anger."

He laughed at her.

"So now she shows her teeth," he said, and really did smile, but angrily, nastily, black-lipped and sharp like a weapon. The oil and grease between her nails slides around and shines off of his armor, and again she thinks of serpents, dragons. She had once been very afraid of them, and wondered why she had not been then. "How sweet you had sounded only moments before, _boidheach_."

Her heart is a forge of hurt when he leaves, but it is at least hot for awhile, like he did not steal anything, and she can watch him go without weeping as their father did. He spared her a glance, but she would not return it, and she hid in the folds of her hood. Hiding. She stooped to hiding from him, like it would change the transparency of her thoughts, how easily he could see past her pouting face.

Nuala never spared him a glance then, and when Nuada had passed beyond the Elven king's long sight, he had turned to her with something like relief. Something dark in her spoke that he was happy to see his son gone. (_You had thought it was Nuada, hissing from across the hills, but he is pious, and loved his father, and you know now that it could have only been you._) Her stomach churned when she was handed a piece of the crown of Bethmoora.

Oily, it is oily, and she can only think of his greaves against the chill flesh of her neck and the submission of the trees.

She woke that night. She had never been so cold in her life. (_You have never been that cold even now_.) She could only think, _theif_.

* * *

It had been foolish to think that would be the last she saw of him. He was in exile of the court, not of the world, and Nuala had not been prepared to isolate herself to the dwellings of the council and court for the rest of her long life. Foolish, but what she thought nonetheless. She did not see him for a long stretch of time anyway. Grand spaces that the courts and gardens were, they were hollow and joyless. Fleeting. He was not there, and she was alone. She could not then bear to see herself so reflected.

She broke three mirrors in that time in between.

"Bad luck," her lady maid had said, "all the bad luck in the world for you if you break any more. Princess, you should know better. You should know to fear yourself so broken, even if only in glass." But she did not. She didn't fear glass. Glass was as cold as her.

"I want to cut my hair," she said, as though the maid had never said anything at all. She held the mirror shards in her hand, like claws, and wondered for a moment how they would feel raked across the skin beneath her left breast. The physicians and humans said that was the side the heart was on. She wondered if hers was too. (_Phantom pain, you felt it then, as you do now, like a ghost hand clawing its way between your ribs. You had then mistaken it for that idea of roots, of opening. This, my lady, is ripping._)

Of course, her father did not let her cut her hair.  
"You would be unhappy either way," he said. "Let me see you as you are now."

She wanted to look different. He didn't understand. She felt different.

She learned to pleat her hair instead, to tie ribbons in it and away from her face. It is a human way, a new way, and many times did she see the looks of disapproval. Braids, she decided one morning, I will always go with braids. And she had been content with that, because she did not look into the mirror for some time and see the emptiness of her gaze. (_You imagine there was a hollow spot between your neck and chest. A hole, nothing more. It's how you used to think the humans looked beneath their clothes, before you finally saw one up close and realized they didn't look so very incomplete. How did everyone know that they were made to always want if they had nothing to show it?_)

Her eyes were a pale amber now. Washed out, like someone had leeched the color out. Nuala very nearly broke another looking glass when she discovered it. She thought her hair must have been disguising it all this time.

"Let me leave," she begged.

"No," her father said.

"I will go mad if I do not see something else other than this place."

"No," her father said, and this time he truly looked wretched. Both of them knew that she would have liked to say 'him'. 'I will go mad if I do not see him.' She didn't know why. She hadn't thought of him at all when she could help it. She wondered if that was why she was so cold. He would of course know that she didn't think of him too and be poorer for it.

One night she cried. Each muscle felt it was in tatters, every bone aching with illness. She was positive that something dreadful had happened, and **they** were going to die. "He is sick!" she screamed. "Why do you not do anything?"

It was nothing that a bottle of laudanum couldn't handle.

When her father asked her the next day, tentative and quiet, how her dreams had been, she couldn't recall having any at all. She was frustrated all day.

* * *

One autumn, she didn't know how many years it had been, she simply didn't feel like moving.

She had no idea why.

"I will go when I am ready," she had said, and smiled benignly. The moss was soft with dead leaves and overturned dirt, so she was not uncomfortable. Just tired. The court ladies she had been with, colorful girls with full lips and breasts, fine featured, had smiled as well, and tried to coax her from her seat. Nuala tried not to resent their bird-fine hands laying on hers, thinking it was some sort of great game. She was simply happy they didn't pull on her braids.

"Nay, nay, Princess," one had cooed, "it will grow chill soon, snow, I smell it. You should come indoors with the rest of us. The willow bowers and oak doors will keep us warm."

"Like your boy, Neamh? Oh yes, his bower will keep you most warm, cariad, most warm." And they all had laughed like it had been funny. It may have been, to them. Nuala was (_is_) a poor actress, but can smile beautifically when pressed. (_They pressed the apples recently at this juncture and made cider for you to drink. Do you suppose the apples smiled too? Maybe smiling is just your face splitting._) She has no Neamh like her lady friend does, no secret lovers, court intrigues, personal interests. She simply **is**. Nuala doesn't even pretend to understand. Just smiles.

They teased for a time, the sun westing and orange-pale-warm. She could feel the frost sliding up her arms, her legs, and shuddered. Still, she just could not stand. There was nothing to pull her up, as though her body were whittled out. A flute, like the centurions and wind spirits had that made hurried noise when blown on, and sat still when left alone. She heard them just last spring, and danced on the new crocus with airy feet. (W_hen did you begin to think so ridiculously?_)

They were cold, the court ladies, they said so now, and Nuala could not stand, could not find it in herself to think that this was somehow wrong, unnatural. Whittled out. She was sitting, and that would do for now. She might have even laid down if pressed (_smile now_) to do so. Her arms trembled beneath her shoulders, but not from cold.

"Go without me," she said with a sigh. "I will return ere the sun sets."

The game wasn't fun anymore. They left to find something else to do. She thought of birds, and felt her lips twitch with amusement. Flighty, easily distracted, constantly observing and adapting. Most of them were younger than her, by centuries even, and she still felt the smallest, most foolish. Nuala would always feel foolish. (_You couldn't get rid of that human hollowness, used for petty insults when there needed to be understanding, embraces, hopeful words. You sent __**him**__ out bitterly. What sort of immortal were you supposed to be?_)

It was just as well that they left. She slept comfortably, if a little coldly, while the sun was still out.

It was waking that hurt so much.

The bird woman had not lied about the snow. She didn't even know why she would think that they would lie. Her people were not duplicious by nature. Excellent storytellers, possible liars, but if the story were strong enough, it would become a sort of half-truth. She preferred to think there were no liars amongst them. (_It shouldn't court if you believe it. That is a sort of truth_.)

It wasn't deep, but from the ground, she could not see where her dress began and her legs ended. It was white, and dark blue with nighttime, like the way she kept her room, like the color of her full skirts. She didn't feel any colder than she normally was.

Nuala still did not move. She didn't know why. She just didn't think she could.

She didn't think she could do a lot of things.

So she went back to sleep. Half-heartedly she wondered if she would die. Maybe she would just live with the winter then. The snow woman. It was a favorite story of hers, human, antiqued. They told it in the mountains, in Scotland, in the wilds of the east, where there were still things to be frightened of. Where her father did not reign as tightly.

Maybe that fear made the humans feel more alive.

When next she woke, she was indoors, and covered in warm wet towels. Beneath them, her chest felt a searing line of heat from chin to navel. She thought she might remember fingers.

Her hair was loose and the ribbons nowhere to be found. She didn't miss them.

* * *

She did not often go to the Troll Market. Not for lack of want, but lack of energy, of effort. The cold was back and heartless and she constantly craved warmth, hid under shawls, cowls, hoods, anything she could hide away in. They all felt shallow, and she could not cover her face without thinking of _him_ again.

Of hiding. Like such a trivial thing would stop _him_.

But it did hurt him, and she was coming to regret that now.

She did not often go to the Troll Market, but she did go now, and looked for things to amuse herself, to amuse her frivolous lady friends. She did not relish their company, but she had little else, and she clutched that against her tightly (_like his arm, between your breasts_) as though friendship were something to be held between fingers. Their girlish inanities, womanly greed, gave her something. Maybe disdain.

"I will look for a blue bird," she said to her father, and he had smiled kindly. She thought she might be the only thing left for him. (_You could see the trauma of your mother's passing in his eyes even those centuries later. You wondered how he held his truce when he could not hold his heart without pain. You loved him selflessly on those days._) "It is summer, and too quiet without birdsong. I have missed it."

She **had** missed it. She didn't even realize she had until she said it.

"Then I would have you look for one for me," said the Elvenking, beard flowing across his chest, antlers catching her hair. She untangled herself with a small smile. "So that yours is not so lonely here."

So she left.

Her first impression was of silt, of grit, of the hot earth beneath the stone. It was stifling in the market, like stepping into the oven. There were roots, and steel, and the smell of sulphur. Nuala's skin remained cold despite it all. (_You might have grabbed for a hand, to steal its warmth. You had brushed to touch something, and you had nearly had it, but didn't remember why seconds later_.)

Tomatoes, she saw, and laughed. She had not seen them before. A relative of nightshade, of lantern flowers, magical things. A common human food and she had never so much as seen one. Thousands of years old, and still inexperienced. Despite her sudden humor, she felt sorry. Like she should apologize. She didn't even know who she should apologize to. (_ You did, but wouldn't say. Not didn't, because that would be a lie, but wouldn't, a lie by omission. You are getting good at those even now._)

"Would my lady care to have it?" said an earthy voice, and she turned to the brown skin of a dryad, her hair a wreath of ivy and rowan, a mouth stretched and perfect across the grain swirls that made her face. Honest. Nuala's mouth was open then, admiring, jealous in some way. She felt very common in the face of the twig and petal beauty of the creature. She wishes she were so simply lovely. Her hands almost reached for the knotted arms, to feel the gentle heat beneath the white bark. (_What you would have given to be a tree in those days, a larch, quiet and alone and content to sit in the sun. Your own thin skin screams of chill, of illness._)

"Would you like to have it?" the dryad said again, and smiled. Nuala heard the wood creak. "Such a shame to see you so downhearted. It is summer and I am so joyous, I would share it with you."

She managed a nod and a smile then, a real one. It felt unused, dusty, but the dryad seemed content with it. "A lady I am, but hardly above paying. How much?"

A giggle that sounded like the rustle of leaves came to her. "You have paid with your smile. I am rich with that alone. Save your money for your birds."

Nuala bit a lip. "It hardly seems a fair trade for..."

The dryad waved an arm that squealed and splintered. "Money is cheap. Honesty is not."

Nuala barely blinked, and she was gone, fruit and all. In her hand was a perfect tomato.

She didn't recall even mentioning the bluebirds.

* * *

Paranoia hit her as a sudden coiling of her arms to her bare chest. The sheet at her toe felt like a snare rather than a drape then.

"Who's there?" she asked the dark. It was still outside her window, her little room in the market. Her guards were downstairs. She had nothing to disguise that she had kicked off her nightclothes in the humidity and shuddering of her body. (_You did not feel it strongly then. You know why now_.) Nuala felt very vulnerable in the endless gaze of the shadows.

"Who's there?"

She was certain someone said "No one."

* * *

She did not leave that day, or the day after. She stayed in a room above the apothecary, an elegant thing with fine fabrics and floors, but smelt of mint and parsnips despite the rich incense scattered across the room. She grew fond of it, and its honest smell. It reminded her of the dryad. She had not found her once since that first time. Nuada liked to think she was rich enough to go home, to keep her plants and fruit for the birds and other creatures. It seemed the sort of thing the dryad might do.

(_You wouldn't. You are selfish. Or at least you have convinced yourself you are_.)

Today she resolved to seek the bluebirds. It felt unkind to leave her father alone while she lingered in the heat of the market. She felt complete no place other, even if she couldn't shake the chills from her, like she could brush snow off a coat. Today, the humid heat and chills curdled her stomach. She pushed away all food.

_I find myself wandering idly most days_, she wrote, _but otherwise in good health._ She sealed it away. She would not send her post to her father. She would tell him herself when it was true. She was used to the cold now.

She wondered when she started lying completely to herself. She didn't want to leave. (_You were looking for something. And you __**never**__ got used to that sickly hollow feeling._)

That day, despite the chill, she continued to sweat, and chose to braid her hair again away from her face. She was more aware of the scarring on her face when she did that, but found no shame or embarrassment in them. They were (_are_) a piece of her, something written onto her by her people's hands. Distinguishment. Something she shares with Nuada even when she can't see him anymore.

At the thought of his name, something inside her leapt up and settled behind her ribs.

She wore blue. She thought it would be funny when she went to get her birds. Her escort looked at her fondly, and she managed a smile for them as well. She knew they had been generous with their time, and while she knew her father would see them paid, she would have them happy. Like she wanted be.

Bluebirds, she reminded herself, with their little songs. I shall get them today.

The atrium, while beautiful and lush, felt very much like what it was. A cage. She could hardly distinguish the trees from the bars and paned glass, and when she did reach for the trees, to see into them as they always had let her before, they shuttered themselves, tightened the way she imagined rope does when pulled. She could not remember a time that the trees did not trust her.

"A shame, it is," said the owner, a pan, little hooves clicking on the mosaic tile floor. (_There was the sun in it, in little gold and bronze tiles that were as warm as the hot earth beneath them. The warm slipped into your thin shoes then._) "I cannae have the birds in the above, and I cannae keep 'em happy in the below." He ticked off time on his little ledger.

"Bluebirds," she said, swallowing around an awkwardness, a ringing at his words. "Do you have any? My father and I thought they would cheer us."

"A few, here'n there. Hard to catch, those ones. Takes a special sort to find the real ones. I hadnae' the heart to keep 'em long here in the heart of summer. Rather keep 'em there than down here where it's stuffy. You sure about them?"

She nodded, in earnest. She didn't know what else could ease her.

He smiled, but it was mischievous. She didn't know what she had expected of him.

"Then you'd best get to work, ey?"

He made her find them herself, which she did not resent per say, as it did tire her. In the heat of the atrium and the chill of her skin, she felt fevered and weak, stumbling around her hems and shoes and the ferns that cover the ground. She saw the flits of blue across her vision many times, but was too sluggish to catch them. She was almost embarrassed as her escort tried to help and the pan watched, frowning with concern. For the bird or for her, she wasn't sure.

A race known for their dexterity, and she could only stumble around like a fool, and try not to get into the guards way when they make a pass at a fleeing bird.

She could taste the bird's terror, and nearly vomited where she stood. Her mind was wroth with those little flutterings, that simple fear of being caught. Could feel the rapid beating of the bird's heart like it were her own. She felt a panic from some distance.

_Please, leave me alone._

"Stop,"she said, very quiet and careful. She sat in the shadow of a sickly looking oak, feeling as withered and dry as it. "Just...just stop."

The bird cried in fear, and shuddered on a branch above. She wished selfishly it would go away from her. She could not bear to be near its stress. She wanted to leave. She did not even want a bird for her own anymore, not if she had to witness its capture and sorrow at being caged tighter still. (Y_ou still don't, especially when you know exactly how it feels. You grew to love and despise your empathy_.)

The bird, from its branch above her, looked quietly at her.

The pan grumbled and walked carefully to her, carefully maintained beard wild like vines. "Aye lass, I'll catch these wee ones later for you. You donnae' look up to this. Shouldn't 'o asked a lady of your breedin' to do it."

"Then why did you ask at all?" she asked crossly.

The pan smiled wanly, like he meant to address a child. Nuala was thousands of years old, and still rankled at lectures, teachings. She was soft faced, kindly, but she did not beg such indulgence of anyone.

"Now donnae' give me such 'o look. There's a bond in catching what you pursue yourself, and an understandin'. You cannae' understand what you do not know. But you be an empath, and you cannae' help but feel the same as that wee bird up o'er yonder. Aye lass, you understand better than most hunters."

"An old pan like yours truly ain' much good for catchin' birds these days. Cannae' climb the trees as well as you can. Take me all day, probably more to catch your wee ones up o'er there. Know they're being sold now, they do."

She sighed, still half-sick with fright. "How long shall I wait?"

"Donnae' think you need to." He smiled then, a hearty thing full of teeth, sharp and blunt alike. "You've got yourself a volunteer to catch your birds. Probably already got one now, fast thing he is. Came in while you were lookin' worse for wear. Demanded to know what I was doin', that one. Looked every bit as anxious as you do now. Aye, looks like he's got one now for you."

Between them came a gloved hand, and on it, a perched bluebird. She recognized the gloves.

"I believe you were trying to catch this. I will admit to expecting a worser fate when I came in,so great was your fear, and from such a distance." Something inside her came loose. She looked to her right, and standing as tall and as flawless as she remembered (_what you __**can**__ remember_), stood Nuada, looking between the bird on his sleeve and her. (_"There's a bond in catching what you pursue yourself."_)

"I see you have braided your hair again," he said, frowning a little. "I wish you would not."

Nuala clenched the dirt between her fingers until she could feel it slip into every crease, and her fingernails left angry half-circles. She was awake. And she was not cold.

* * *

To be continued.

Notes:

Cyhyraeth: Welsh/Anglo mythological creature. Further notes in part 2.

Leannan Boidheach: Irish/Gaelic nickname meaning "pretty sweetheart" or "loved beauty".

Cariad: Welsh nickname meaning "heart". Affectionate term for friends and family.

Dryad: Celtic/Gaelic mythological creature. Spirit of a tree, often deified by the Druids. Also, on a side note, the tomato does come from the belladonna family, which includes the Chinese Lantern plant, persimmmons, and the poisonous Deadly Nightshade. Nightshade, in the Medieval era, was used to dilate the pupils of women. Wide pupils was considered a mark of beauty.


	2. And I most deject and wretched of women

Title: Cyhyraeth (2/2)

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Hellboy belongs to Dark Horse Comics.

Summary: Exile separates them no more than a pane of glass. NuadaNuala, movieverse, told in two parts.

* * *

A flash of feathers, of sky darting to and fro between the posts of her bed. She thought of spring, of new columbines and morning glories. Nuala smiled, and settled her skirts around her, watching them go to and fro across the room. The bluebirds chirped happily from atop her dresser in the small quarters she held.

They however would not sing. Nuala did not resent them for it. She thought it might have just been where they were.

"I had feared they would fly away," she said, hand idly pulling at the tips of her hair. They felt brittle beneath her fingers, and she wondered about water and autumn. (_You are too young to be falling apart in this memory, when you were not quite whole but not vacuous either. You will be. But this may have been it's beginning._) "They seem content enough to fly around and between each other. The open window has been no concern at all."

A hand rested against the back of her neck, over her hair. She idly thought about it against the skin there. Would it be cold (_like you_)? Would she shudder away as she had always done with others?

"You were wise to buy two."

She looked to her side, where the birds were, because Nuada had her by the neck, and she could not look at him. (_You felt a secret thrill that he was there at all._)

"T'wasn't my idea." she said plainly. "I would've grieved a single one in hopes that it would make me happy. Father was the one that felt there ought to be two."

"How unlike him."

She frowned. "I don't pretend to know what you mean." She didn't. She didn't know at all.

He might have looked at her then. She thought she might have been able to see herself in her mind's eye, and wasn't near as calm looking as she would have liked. But her heart was full of anxieties and sharp spines, and for the life of her she could not swallow away the still hardness of her throat.

"I have missed you," he said.

She believed him.

"I wonder if I will be able to get them back in their cages," she wondered aloud. She felt him smile, even if she couldn't see it.

The hand on her neck moved to cup the side of her face. (_Hot. He had been hot, like a brand. You could feel all the heat slide from yourself and into his fingers_.) "I will put them back in if they will not. You were positively distressed before I found you." She squirmed a little, growing tired under the attention. Maybe even a little uncomfortable. She loved him. She wanted to apologize. She wasn't even sure what she was apologizing for anymore.

Maybe she should have thanked him instead. He would like that.

The intent rose in her throat, and she could feel the vowels and sounds that ought to come from her stick between her breastbone and collar. She could not speak past it. (_You think he knew it._)

"Hush, sister. And take a turn with me in the market," he said and walked in front of her, hands tight around her wrists. His eyes on the decolletage of her dress. Breastbone and collarbone. She thought he might be able to see it. The place with the hole, her voidheart. "Methinks you mean to leave soon, or that you will be sent for. I would take pleasure in seeing your pretty face again."

He avoided what she could have said then. '_Don't look. Don't look at my empty spaces_.' Instead she looked down then to her wrists, her hands, her unkempt nails. Little half-moons of dirt underneath them. He was not wearing his armor now, but she could still feel the grease of it anyway.

Nuada slid away from her mind. (_You wish you could do the same._)

* * *

She couldn't sleep that night. The birds sat still in their brocade-covered cage, and she envied them that. More than a dozen blankets later, the chill was back, and her ever-widening emptiness sat cold and dead in her throat.

_I fear I will not be able to speak soon_, she wrote quickly, on the back of some paltry thing, a receipt, an invitation, she couldn't really see what it was in the dark. She was frightened somehow and doe-cautious, she wanted only to say her thoughts and be rid of them. A card paper, resolute and white in the dim light coming from beneath her shutters and door. It rasped against her drying fingertips and quill, and in a passing fancy, she nearly passed it through her unbound hair. Let the ink smear in her tresses.

She would go home tomorrow. She wanted to quit this place. (_Your heart was turned to **him**, and you could only think now that he had gone for the night how much you wanted to get away._)

On the back, written in a firm hand, was but a few words.

_You felt so cold._

* * *

She dreamt again, for the first time in what felt like a thousand years of blind sleep, without the colors and sounds of the mind. She was glad to do so. The cold, however, followed her even there.

Nuala walked this dream, mindful of her toes and razor-ground, deceptively green and soft from what she could see. But each foot screamed, and the earth had eyes of metal and stone and she could only look back at where she thought they might be.

_Sit, _they said. They had no mouths to say it with.

She sat anyway. It did not feel so very wrong. Her (_alarmingly red_) dress sank beneath her, rippled into the sharp grass like a (_snake_) gentle wave. Beyond it, there was moss. There may have been trees. It was so dark there, she felt as though she were in the shade, or against a wall. Across from her, looking cheery and bright was one of the court ladies, dressed in linen. Such a simple cloth, so thin, unprotective. Even in her layers of velvet and satin and china cloth, Nuala could not feel anything other than vulnerable. Nuala didn't completely believe her smile was honest. She did not know if anyone was in earnest anymore. Even her brother.

The woman's greatest disguise was her grinning eyed mask.

"Hail, Lady Princess." she said. Nuala smiled, as a child does. Afraid to burn herself. She avoided looking too long on the crescent slits of eyes.

"Hail," she said, and tasted the word. It was a relief she could say it at all. (_You had not thought to speak in those weeks following the last time you saw Nuada. Where he had stolen your warmth before, you think he may have stolen your voice this time_.) This was a dream. Maybe she had only thought it into being.

The lady pulled a trailing sleeve, pulling the leaves (_when were there leaves_) beneath it. "I had not thought to see you. I had not thought to even have you know me." She chewed the corner of her mouth that looked like it would taste of ashes. She did not seem pleased with her. "What manner of power he has, to even now betray your father's will. Tut, even now he is pushing at me, a nagging in the pit of my stomach. Such a selfish child."

Nuala frowned. "I do not understand."

"La," the woman laughed, meanly. "You understand so little."

"It has been a long time since last you dreamed," said the lady, and her teeth were sharp in her mouth. Something inside her was distantly afraid, and deeper still, angry. She did not often rise to wrath. Nuala wanted to panic, let it spread its arms and climb the bones from her stomach to her head (_like a ladder_), find power in that desperation, but didn't. "It is very hard to dream past someone like myself who is always so hungry for them. I am even allowed in, as it were."

"What do you mean?" she asked and dreaded the answer. She should not ask questions she does not want to know. Her father told her so all the time. (_He doesn't want your questions answered either._)

The woman was coy, and smiled around her blackened mouth. Glutted, fat lips she had, lips that wrap around fingers and ears and eyeballs, swallowing. She ate cherries that way. She sucked the flesh from the pit and let the juice slide down her perfect chin and **he** was watching while you-

Nuala blinked (_why did you think such a thing?_) and curled her hands into herself. The black linen of the lady's dress was very near suffocating when so close to her ankle, her leg, her waist, her...

"It's easy to eat, dreams, little fickle things, easily forgotten." The linen shifted, the woman stood, and Nuala looked up to a half-mad face. "I catch them, like a spider. But he can come here too, and he is the one that I eat the path out from under. But I wonder," and her face twisted into a beautific 'o' of thought. "I wonder why he only tries harder now. Like he has a better hold. You have given him footholds."

_Do not listen to her. She is a poison._

Nuala stood, shakily. She felt no stronger in her legs than a lamb, and just as thin and wavering. "My brother," she said, and it empowered her a little. "My brother and I are connected, and it is no business of yours what I traffic in dream anymore than what I traffic in the day."

_She is a poison. I will draw her out._

The woman laughed again. "You are naïve. He is no hero. He would hurt you if only to keep you. I eat something less essential than what he would have swallowed whole." A coil of golden hair sprung from behind her mask like an earring. Nuala, with a fury she didn't know she had, jumped for it. (_You would tear it off of her, that little, tiny imperfection. She is touchable if she is not perfect_.)

"Leave me!" she cried. A finger brushed that tiny corkscrew of a curl, and Nuala despaired to grab it, to wrench it.

_You must make her lose her concentration._

The woman flinched.

And Nuala stared, wide awake into the ceiling of her bedroom.

The court was dark when she finally drew herself, aching, into it. Her head pounded. She was weak, and this bothered her more than anything. She could only just barely recall what she had dreamed. Something inside didn't want her too. Looking into her father's wizened eyes, she thinks ungraciously for a minute that it is him.

(_That's not right. You love him equally-secondly-notatallafter to your brother_.)

"And how did you sleep last night?" a woman, bent over her father's shoulder asks. Nuala eyes a ringlet of blonde hair, uncommon amongst her kind. She wasn't her kind. The woman was not an elf at all. She had no eyes. She carried a mask to make them for her.

Nuala felt suddenly very anxious again. (_Your heart reached for him then, too. A nod, imperceptible, and long elegant fingers inside your mind, beneath your skin. You allowed yourself to think you are safe._)

The lady sighed, and twisted her lips towards the ground. "The winter's almost here, and I find I can't remember most of my nightpaths. I find it helps if I just don't worry on it too often. Bad for the complexion, dearie." A black linen sleeve slid along the white of the throne. Nuala heard the crinkle of dead moss and earth in it.

"Tunridha," her father said. "You are too presumptuous."

"Oh my King Balor," says the Tunridha, "only so much as you."

She still did not dream often afterward. And what little she did dream was so convoluted and dark that she did not care to see it. Like she were falling, or struggling to escape a shroud and she couldn't breathe past her mouth (_you didn't need to **breathe**_). They left her clutching the sheets, a washed out little thing hugging skirts and arms to feel she had something to hide behind.

Nuala was paler now than what she had been.

There was one thing that had changed significantly. She did not need the dreams to feel that constant presence again. Like she had invited it there. In a way, she had. And it sat in her voidheart, roosted, made itself comfortable in the growing expanse.

The dreams always remained the same tapestry of color and texture and that time there were hands and she went to arch against a wall as **he** found purchase in the strings of her corsets and neckline, pulling them down until she could feel his-

(_"Just stop."_)

"You are fortunate that you do not recall them. The dream eater's unraveling them to make her supper," said her chambermaid. "Which Just as well. They eat nightmares too."

* * *

She sought him out on her own.

It took her years to decide it was a good idea. She did not feel the measure of time the same way as a mortal, nor as the fey folk did. They counted in moments. She counted in times of chill and sickness. And she had endured long between them. It was winter again, and she was little more than a leaf next to most others. There was nothing to her other than gold tissued fabric, brittle wheat hair. She could only think of that wholeness again. With her, she took her birds. They were not the same ones that he had caught for her, but she has brandished the memory like a weapon, and it is on their flighty minds as well as hers.

What a sight she must have made in the twisting escher of the market, sitting waifishly on a chair next to the canals with a cage of anxious birds. Leaning into the wefts of a tree's deep roots, pretending she belonged there. She watched other people, and hoped to see familiar amber eyes in someone's face. (_You're not sure if you can recognize faces at this point. You learn again much later._)

"You will know," she whispered to a bluebird. "Your gaze is keener than mine, more focused. You use your hunger like a tool."

She smiled at them. "And you must be very hungry." From her sleeve, she grabbed a pouch of soft cornmeal and pured it into the hollow of her palm. From an opening, the bluebird settled on the edge of her thumb. She counted its claws as it ate, and marveled that it did not dig them into her. She halfway wanted it to.

She was content to watch and in a moment of passing tiredness, to sleep, bird perched on her hand. Even with the small voice in her head telling her it was not safe, and her own rising discomfiture, she continued to nod away. The bird, finishing its grain, looked to her face and surely saw nothing. (_A great emptiness that has spread from your throat and into your eyes. Tell me, Nuala, how did you dream last night?_) It settled into her palm as well, feathers bristled.

She woke when some large thing jarred her shoulder. There was a sound like bells, and she opened her eyes. The cage with the other bird rolled away and towards the water, bird squeaking its terror.

"Ai!" she cried, and rose so quickly that all the blood rushed from her head. In her hand, the other bird called and cried out to its companion. Her heart stirred bitterly woeful at that. From the cage, that feeling of panic stole into her mind, erased her logic. Her heart was grieved for the birds. Mindlessly, she ran to catch the gold filament of the cage.

The unexpected resistance of the walking crowd terrified her. Everywhere they were shoving and bumping into her while she chased after the cage to ease the crying birds. (_It would drown if you did not catch it. You were responsible for that tender little life and that made you ill with guilt._) An elbow to the shoulder as she stooped, a knee to the hip as she crouched to reach beneath a guard rail. It hurt, distantly. (_You think that's what called him._)

The cage rattled over the edge. She rasped between breaths after it.

He had to catch her beneath her ribs to keep her from falling into the canal, and with just as much ease he extended an arm and caught the bird's cage where the bird flapped and warbled and whistled anxiously. In her hand, the other came to rest on his arm and sing to its partner.

"I trust you are alright?" Nuada asked. She only sobbed with relief. Her relief was two-fold when she felt his own returning calm, as though they had never been separated at all. His arm dug into her gut, but even that was a comfort. A fortress to hide behind.

She sniffed, and rubbed an eye. "As well as ever, I would guess. You seem to only run into me when I am at my most distressed."

"It is then that I feel the need to draw closest," he said without preamble, and sought to right her on her feet. "You are shaking. Why?"

"I do not know."

(_"You understand so little."_)

He may have been concerned then, but he drew her back across the crowd with ease to where she had sat. "Let us right your birds. They are quite vocal in their anger. Of course, no one likes to go careening in circles to an early death." He laughed a little, an amused hum. It was practically glowing with warmth and she clung tighter. _Let me but feel it,_ she thought, and hoped she had not been so very transparent. _I only want to be warm again_.

Nuada looked at her for a long moment, and she watched too, and thought that time has left him untouched. Beautiful. She might have been sorry again in some way. But whatever he had sought, he quickly found. She could almost feel the invisible hand brush over her consciousness.

"I am glad you've come," he said at last. His voice very nearly trembled. Nuala felt an unspeakable grief, and knew it was not hers. (_You also felt an unspeakable hunger. Funny how you were able to overlook it for a time._) "It has been too long since last you were in my presence. It is as being hidden in the dark only to miss the sun, and once in its presence, everything is again living."

"You flatter me, brother," she rasped, and nodded again with sleep. "You must forgive me, I am not wholly myself today. No," she muttered, "that's not right either. I am myself always. But I have not been well."

His hand reached for her waist again, and pulled her to walk close to him. His hands were a brand against her. She shook with their tenderness.

"I know," he said. She didn't know how he could.

She rested in a tiny room next to a tavern, and her pillows smelt of hops and warm bread. She had grinned at first, secretly, into the cotton and down of the cushions. It was comfortable there and Nuada was with her. Her heart's joy was unmistakable. When she slept, Nuada removed himself to the corner of the room, with a wooden lattice screen separated them. In the cut-out stars and circles, she could see the flash of his own pale throat or even a window of his eye. (_It was as though you looked into a viper's nest, a one slit of gold looked back._)

* * *

Nuala thought she dreamt again.

The swirl of colors, the breathlessness, it all felt the same as those times. But this time it was hot, suffocatingly close in and **heavy**. The world was tearing its own threads apart, and leaving only half of it behind. She couldn't breathe. Nuala didn't even try. (_You gave up._)

She had gotten used to submitting to those prying fingers in her clothes, and only sighed when loosed enough that **he **could leave a trail of warm breath from the white shell of her ear to the blanch flesh of her breast, uncovered and damp with sweat. Her body was already at fever-pitch, his other hand moving cradle-rock steady against the crux of her legs.

"I have to..." she panted, biting her tongue against a sob. "I have to..."

_I have to get away._

The scene unraveled. She might have cried out. Everything was so tight, like her body were expanding from the inside out, and she couldn't escape because he had her legs pinned beneath his knees and everything was the simple light of the candelabra – didn't **he** see that she was falling out from beneath the world and he just smiled, satisfied in some way-

She was so cold when she woke up.

Nuala was only too glad that Nuada had chosen to lie next to her.

* * *

"You should eat something, sister. You are very pinched looking today," he said, and pulled affectionately (_you think it was affection_) on her ear and tapped her nose. She didn't suppose to know what sort of game he played, but smiled anyway.

She couldn't concentrate. Another half-dream? (_Are you ever awake anymore?_)

"If I am pinched, then you may very well be a beanpole, Nuada," she said. "I am beginning to wonder if you ever eat at all."

He laughed. "Winter rationing, sister, just winter rationing. I eat when I am given the opportunity and am glad for it." She might have seen his hands tremble a bit. "Food is such a paltry thing for our sort. I think most eat it for the comfort of it, the memory of plates and goblets. I get my strength from other things."

Nuala frowned. "Then, brother, an opportunity." She held up a winter persimmon. "I tire of eating without company. Shall we wager if the fruit is bitter or sweet?" A favorite game of theirs, from when she was still a whole head shorter than him, only with smaller hands, softer hair. They did not play games often when the war drew near.

His lips, black (_like the tunridha_), nearly split his face with his amusement. Her little voidheart shuddered against its confines and her legs, unwittingly, clenched. It sounded like hollow space. (_It sounded like the world's edge, and you moaning like a whore-_)

"I have already eaten."

* * *

She was ashamed the first time she felt the need to avoid him. She simply needed to get away. That small bird-terror crawled in her chest, beat itself against her spine and breast. Nuala was shaking. She slipped out from the bed, felt his arm slide from across her waist and to the coverlet. She couldn't even remember when he had crossed the room to stay with her.

She wore a morning coat (_the color of foxglove and irises, like the veins in her arms_), hardly anything else when she slipped into the nocturnal life of the troll market. It did not rest, not like she often felt the need to now that she was whittled away with time. She would have laughed if it were not so unusual. She was a timeless being, and already she was tired. No one spared her a glance, and for that she was happy. If no one knew she was there, then no one could point Nuada in her direction while she walked about.

While it did not sleep, the troll market still was quieter. They could not see the dark of twilight here, nor the sun of the day, only the constant glow of the molten rock and the firefly lamps perched unlovingly in goblin posts. They creaked even as she passed, as though wanting to be pulled down. Nuala understood how that felt.

The waterways were not so crowded, and she delighted in the delicate frames of the water gates, and the bright fish and creatures that danced beneath and behind. They did not come into the market proper now. She felt cut off somehow.

The subterranean world was quite beautiful the deeper she went, but dark, and the few plants that lived there grew paler and dewy beneath her fingers. They glowed, only half-heartedly, but still enough that she could see the walls and the stagnant blue light on the water. The cobbles were rough under her feet (_you had forgotten your shoes_), she couldn't see them, and for a while she fancied she would cut their soles with brittle quartz and old cogs from the goblin wagons.

Deeper she went, and there was a forest of silver and old stone buildings woven between them. To her own ancient eyes, it felt very old, older than her.

"I don' often see lasses and ladies such as yereself down 'ere."

Nuala turned, sharp, felt the branches of a sylvan willow snap against her iris-vein coat, and watched with careful eyes. At first she could not see the world behind her at all for all the blood that had rushed from her face in her fear. But now she relaxed, watching a younger woman stumble up behind her, covered in old tatters of grey and brown clothing. Her hands had been wrapped carefully in bandages, and each finger looked broken and tired against the folds of her cloak.

"I didn' mean ta scare ye." The woman-child looked at her from behind dirty flax hair. Nuala thought she could smell something burning. "I don' see many people 't all down 'ere. I ferget the sun and the fire in the winter. I can' find my home anymore and come 'ere instead. I can' see so well. This place is warm." (_You both could understand that_.)

She breathed ashes. Nuala tasted them in her own mouth.

She didn't look so old, only perhaps just into her adolescence, but so horribly scarred that Nuala flinched away from her. If it hurt the girl's feelings, she didn't let it show. Only sighed her grey dust, and dusted her ruinous sleeves sadly. (_She felt older than your thousands of years. You were already so stretched and thin, that you couldn't imagine what was left of her_.)

"I was wandering," she said, looking to see the pretty face beneath all that dirt and brokenness. (_Escaping_.) "I do not often come to the market, and when I do, it is but for a brief spell. I...wanted to be by myself."

"You shoul' go home, daughter."

Nuala blinked. The woman-child only frowned, eyes but a crease of black soot and milky-white globes.

"Go home, daughter o' the earth."

Nuala felt her heart clench. The voidheart did nothing, but was quiet in the presence of the tatters of this girl. She couldn't decide how old she was anymore. "Who are you to call me so?" (_She made you feel so stupid. So young._)

The girl-woman only smiled. Her teeth were a flash of grey in the trees' gentle glow.

"I am me'self. _Iomlán_. Whole, no matter the dust. Ye are not."

Nuala coiled into herself. Like it would make it hurt less.

"Nay, girl, I wasn' always so. Just as ye weren' always as ye are. I change, because it changes in the above, and that is me' home. No matter how much metal **they** fill it with. Aye, I'll always make it back home at the end." She smiled. Nuala thought it was beautiful. "T'is **theirs** now, and I am too old to be doin' more than what is required o' me."

"The humans then," Nuala sighed. "My father is of a similar mind, and in part, I. But you are more forgiving than I if you allowed such a thing to happen to yourself. You must have been such a proud creature once."

"Once? Aye, I was, and that was too short even then." A laugh, like a sharp wind. Something about it rang mournful on her heart. "A wink in a second in'a minute when I think abou ' it now. Perhaps I was n'er proud t'all. Decay is the price of all things that continue on."

When she thought about it, years later, it was surreal to consider herself standing at the edge of water and the grieved trees of the underworld, thinking herself somehow better than a slip of a creature that had no pride in her. Even the kindest part of her own being was in some way jealously guarding and nursing her superiority. (_That part of your self your brother ruled, and you could not bear to see him __depart it_.)

"Is it decay that chills me?" she asked, suddenly uncertain. It felt reasonable.

"Nay," the girl-woman said, and let that sit between them.

It could have been hours that they did not look at each other but instead the decrepit little buildings, the withered gilt leaves. She could not bear to think of herself one day so broken, or if it would be a different sort entirely. Maybe that coldness would spread until she simply didn't exist inside of herself anymore. A banshee, a death knell, _cyhyraeth, the bone white._ (Y_ou looked to their cries over the moors, on the edge of the sea, certain they would tell you of your brother's dying, __**your dying**_.)

_Your voice would be lovely if it screamed_, says the collar-breast shadow.

It had been naïve to think herself alone, ever, in mind or body. She was not surprised when Nuada came from the lingering light of the upper market, hair in a flurry and looking wrathful. She was surprised to see that anger, that predator's intent. Her people are peaceable by nature. She hardly recognizes her self's other.

The girl-woman smiled around tears. Nuala did not see that she wept at all. "_Neamhiomlan. Nach __mór __am trua._"

"Nuala, away from that wretch," her brother demanded, lips drawn tight across his frown. "She is hardly the company you ought to be keeping. Nay, she is not even company."

Nuala looked pleadingly at him. "Such unkindness!" she said. "I have never heard you so hateful towards another."

"Respect is given where it is deserved." He quipped. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her back. He burned her with his fury. "That old crone is exactly what I fear for our father, for you. Little more than a lurking shadow until the humans see fit to have use of her, and she follows, eagerly. Happy for it." A scoff, disgust. It coiled between them. (_Serpents. Snakes._) "I would not have you speak to my sister so freely."

The dirty flax hair covered the girl-woman's eyes, leaving behind her death's head smile. But strangely, Nuala was not afraid. Only wretched. There was once beauty in that scarred and blackened face. "Brother," she began in frustration, only to stop when one dirty hand rose.

The girl-woman looked at her brother, milky eyes steady against his own jewel-bright ones. Nuala almost hated his resilience of mind, his disdain for the slight figure in front of him. Instead, he wrung her wrist, and she gasped in pain.

"Your fire does not cleanse, it blackens."

Nuada sneered. "How pretty your feet are, Latiaren."

Latiaren looked down pitifully.

And disappeared in flame.

* * *

She was deeply unhappy that night. Every second aimed to wound (_the last one, to kill_) and passed in icy silence between the two of them. (_You call it silence, even though he spoke pretty words, because it was desolate between you and you know this disturbed him._)

He pulled at her mouth with teeth then, and this surprised her, but she did not resist. He was raw with his affections, and Nuala did love him, in her own way. It was not quite what he had been looking for, but it would suffice for now. His palms scalded, his mouth branded, and she let him because it was familiar. Because she couldn't tell the difference between awake and asleep.

"I love you," he said, and, as always, she believed him.

The world was expanding again, and she was losing herself in its seams. She was clothed, she was not. There, there on the floor. There they were, those petticoats and hip wraps and other things that were meant to cover, to hide. She was always hiding from him. It was exciting to be exposed. (_You were scared then too, but so overcome that you may have mistaken it for passion_.)

He had long fingers, she knew this from childhood, when their little differences had been exciting, something that differentiated them. She had been more excited by them than he, who she suspected would have been content to share a face to the world's end. He dipped them into her now, pushing, curling between her pleasure and her discomfort. She practically welled with wetness, and had to cover embarrassment with shaking hands. Oily, dirty, between his fingers like armor grease. Her stomach turns at the thought. Her toes curled into the folds of his slacks, and almost cried like a child with vulnerability.

Trees, roots, trust. She was not one for conflict in any one thing. It was easier to give than it was to protect.

Maybe it was in this that she was most like her father.

(_He did not hurt you at all. Nuada is passionate in all things, and he has never been less than generous in his love. It is __**your**__ heart that you feel that all but yourself aim to keep guarded against him. They are teaching you fear of your other half._)

(_"He is no hero."_)

When the room was dark, she thought of Latiaren. Like she was afraid to do so while he was awake, that he would perceive her mind and think it a betrayal. (_Something cries out that it is he that has betrayed you._)

"I will be whole too, someday," she whispered to the lingering dark. And when she would be whole, it would be different from the old god's broken acceptance. The cold was not as strong when he was close. (_He has taken the life from you and you are too weak with memory of your perfection together, long ago, to know him for what he is._)

"And it will be terrible and beautiful," she added, and thought of bluebirds.

(_A thief._)

Nuada, beyond her vision, smiled.

* * *

End

Notes:

Tunridha: Norse/Gaelic mythology. The tunridha, or volva, was a witch or spirit that came to men and women in dreams and nightmares and ate the dreams. More often than not, the person was driven mad.

_Iomlán_: Irish/Gaelic term meaning 'complete'.

Cyhyraeth: Welsh/Gaelic mythology. A cyhyraeth is a spirit of the lingering dead, or in some cases, a spirit that eats the lingering dead for their warmth. Unlike the Irish banshee, the Welsh cyhyraeth was used in a common linguistic context that meant someone was hollowed out or in their death throes.

_Neamhiomlan. Nach mór am trua._: Irish/Gaelic phrase. 'You are not whole. It is a shame.' Since there is no distinctive pronoun, it is ambiguously addressed to either Nuada or Nuala.

"_Your fire does not cleanse, it blackens."_ : Paraphrased quote from Silent Hill. The original is in the context of a completely ashen world that has been destroyed to cleanse it for the coming of a god. "The fire does not cleanse, it blackens."

Latiaren: Irish/Gaelic mythology. Latiaren was one of the three goddesses of the harvest, Liatiaren being the death of it and its withering into winter. Later on, during the Christian era, Latiaren was sainted and given a new story. In it, she visits a blacksmith every day and when one day he comments on the beauty of her unshod feet, she looks down and her apron catches fire. She burnt until she disappeared into a rock beneath them and there remained.

Nuada dismisses her by making her look to her feet and again burst into flames. As one of the Gaelic deities that is conformed into the spreading Christiandom, he does not look upon her favorably but as a traitor.

Bluebirds: Are actually an old symbol of happiness, loss, and madness. Depending on the context of course. I'll leave that interpretation up to you.


End file.
